The Girl With The Make-Believe Husband [Large Print] (The Rokesbys, #2)

by Julia Quinn

With her brother Thomas injured on the battlefront in the Colonies, orphaned Cecilia Harcourt decides to travel to America to nurse him back to health, but instead she finds injured officer Edward Rokesby, who believes her to be his wife.

• ISBN10: 0062670336
• ISBN13: 9780062670335
• Publish Date: 30 May 2017
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Avon Books
• Edition: Large type / large print edition
• Format: Paperback (UK Trade)
• Pages: 480
• Language: English
• URL: http://harpercollins.com.au/9780062670335

Reviews

[mrs_mander_reads]

So good! Can't wait to dive into more Bridgerton-universe novels.

[nitzan_schwarz]

Somewhere between 3.5 and four?

I mean, I really enjoyed it, no doubt about that, but I did feel like I didn't quite know why they were in love with each other since the majority of that process had happened off page in correspondences they've had for a year. We are given a taste of it, but not enough for me. Like, they were adorable, but very much in love from around page one, so I felt like I missed all the fun lol

It kind of dragged. I liked the concept but the execution kind of fell flat. There was too much drama around the whole situation. Cecilia spent a lot of time whinging about how bad she felt and how she couldn't tell Edward that they weren't really married. She had plenty of opportunities she just didn't want to.

[Kait ✨]

This was funny and infinitely better than the first instalment in this series, [b:Because of Miss Bridgerton|25657772|Because of Miss Bridgerton (Rokesbys, #1)|Julia Quinn|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1480122942l/25657772._SY75_.jpg|45479802], but it’s still not Quinn’s best. Perhaps she’ll never be able to top her beloved OG Bridgerton series, which began with [b:The Duke and I|110391|The Duke and I (Bridgertons, #1)|Julia Quinn|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1379594717l/110391._SY75_.jpg|846763]... I keep hoping she will, but in The Girl with the Make-Believe Husband, as with many of Quinn’s other recent publications, the chemistry between the magic was not there. I will say that this book had chemistry in spades, a very unique setting for Regency romance, and a hilarious as all get-out main character. I also love the pretend marriage thing, and that alone probably bumped my rating up a star :)

[stacey_is_sassy]

I wish I could say the book was as good as its ending…

Should I base my rating on my feelings at the end of the book?

I could easily tell you that I finished The Girl With The Make-Believe Husband (geez, that’s a mouthful) with a big smile on my face. There’s even a chance I could say that the ending left me satisfied and excited for more. I’d even go as far as to say that that ending was a 5-star ending. Unfortunately, I can't rate a book on the ending alone. For most of this journey, I wanted to throttle the heroine. I could have easily reached into the book, dragged Miss Harcourt out by her hair and lectured her about honesty and growing a backbone. If only the hero hadn't taken a blow to the head. Seriously, I wanted better for him.

I won’t need to go on too much in this review because it’s pretty straight forward. This chickie’s father dies, and a slimy cousin wants to marry her. She decides to travel across the Atlantic to visit her injured brother who is stationed in New York with the Army. On arrival, turns out her brother is missing and his best friend is in the hospital. Now, this best friend is sort of her penpal. They won’t let her see him because she’s not family. Well, her answer to that was to make herself “family”. He wakes up, finds out he has a wee problem with his memory and is gobsmacked to find out he has a wife. What follows is a tale full of…

LIES, LIES…AND A FEW MORE LIES

The End

Ok, I admit, there’s a wee bit more to it than that but I seriously struggled to get past the LIES and it went on for most of the bloody story.

Miss Cecilia Harcourt - LIAR

Captain Edward Rokesby – Son of an Earl, handsome, strong, loyal and a devoted friend.

There are plenty of other things that I grew to admire about Edward but I can honestly say that I struggled to like Cecilia. She came across as weak, conniving and self-serving. Yes, she had her reasons and they weren’t all bad but, to me, her bad outweighed her good.

If this story, and my rating, could be based solely on Captain Rokeby, I would easily rate it 4 or 5 stars. With Miss Harcourt in the mix, I struggled...lordy how I struggled. As I mentioned, I really enjoyed the ending. I just wished that the truth had come out a lot earlier. I wanted to see them together together, not just with secrets and lies marring their happiness.

I am a huge fan of Julia Quinn and will always love her writing. Unfortunately, The Girl With The Make-Believe Husband just missed it by that much (think Maxwell Smart). Of course, this will not make me hesitate to read more of her books in the future.

Stacey is Sassy, received an advanced copy of this story. The copy provided is not the final copy and may be subject to edits and changes.

[Cocktails and Books]

3.5 Cocktails

Cecilia Harcourt loved her brother Thomas. They were all each other had. They had a father but he wasn’t there for them in the way they were there for each other. Cecilia wrote to her brother who was in the army constantly. In writing to her brother she got to know her brother’s best friend and roommate Edward Rokesby.
So when she finds herself in Manhattan Island looking for her brother, she doesn’t hesitate to come to the aid of Edward. Cecilia learns Edward is in the hospital and poses as his wife. When Edward wakes up and can’t remember anything from the last four months Cecilia lets him believe they are married. Cecilia and Edward both are trying to find out what happened to Thomas who is missing. Edward is also trying to recover his memories.
Although the book is a bit predictable, it is a good story that is thoroughly entertaining. Cecilia has a great personality and courage that is sometimes lacking in some classic heroines. Edward is predictably overprotective. He is immediately upset when he learns of the housing arrangements for Cecilia and demands she be placed somewhere better. I love how they both love each other despite having never met in person before. I really enjoyed it and the slight plot twists made the story different and kept me engaged. Cecilia and Edward fall in love and inevitably Edward regains his memory and the mystery is solved. However this brings about new challenges for them both.

[kimbacaffeinate]

Cecilia Harcourt is tending to her father in her ancestral home as her brother, Thomas and his friend Edward Rokesby battle in the Americas. She corresponds with her brother, but slowly messages go back and forth between Edward and Cecilia.

When Cecilia's father passes and Thomas is injured her scheming cousin makes plans to wed her. Of course, the only responsible thing to do is travel to America to find her brother! Quinn hooked me from the start, and I absolutely loved the correspondence we were made privy to at the beginning of each chapter.

When Cecilia arrives she cannot locate her brother but discovers that Edward is unconscious in a church converted into a makeshift hospital. When she is unable to attend him, she declares herself his wife...and then he wakes up!

Poor Edward awakens missing six months of memory and finds himself married. He cannot even remember the wedding. Oh, what fun! While I did get a little annoyed at Cecilia for not being straight with Edward. I understood her reasons and laughed at some of her quick thinking comments regarding their supposed relationship. Their conversations, the awkwardness, and inner thoughts had me smiling and laughing.

The romance was slow-burning despite the nuptials and had a surprising buildup. Their chemistry felt genuine and I found myself truly wishing for an HEA. The ending had a few twists, a little heartache, and some humor all of which kept me flipping the pages.

Copy provided by the publisher. This review was originally posted at Caffeinated Book Reviewer

[Rowena]

We first hear about Edward Rokesby in the first book, Because of Miss Bridgerton. He’s the Rokesby brother that everyone thought was going to marry Billie Bridgerton. He’s the brother that is fighting in the war and though he doesn’t make an appearance in that book, we still got to know him through his family and I was pretty stoked to hear that we were going to finally meet him in this book so I couldn’t wait to get this book for review.

Edward was everything that I hoped he’d be. He was fun, flirty and a little rough around the edges. He was a good man at heart and he protected those close to him and he considered Cecelia close. He’s never met her in real life before but when he wakes up from an injury and finds out that she has been by his side for days now and that they’re…married, he doesn’t question it. He steps up and does what he can for Cecelia. She’s his best friend’s sister and she’s a good person so if she says they’re married then it must be true.

Only it’s not and the only person that knows that is Cecelia. Sure, she has a legit reason for telling everyone that they’re married and that reason is why she ran away from England but I have a hard time with secret plots and this particular secret messed with my enjoyment of the book as a whole because Cecelia took too long to come clean with Edward. I sympathized with her because she’s pretty much all alone in the world now and with a money hungry cousin sniffing around, I get that she felt like she had no choice but to lie but the longer she kept the lie from Edward is where I started having issues with her. I didn’t care about her lying to everyone else. That was necessary but when it became unnecessary for her to lie to Edward, she should have come clean and she didn’t.

I loved Edward’s character. I could totally see him fitting in perfectly with the rest of his family back home. I loved seeing him fall in love with Cecelia and seeing him keep his distance from her until she was comfortable with him made me laugh because he’d gone without female companionship for a long time and then to have Cecelia so close and not being able to touch her, his wife to boot, poor guy.

Cecelia’s love for her family was something I liked about her. She was a good person at heart and I still liked her as a person. I loved seeing her fall in love with Edward and just be there for him when he needed her was great to witness. She thought of the little things to make his life easier and I loved that she handled all of that stuff for him. When she wrote his family to make sure that they knew that he was okay was great and I loved reading her letters to both Thomas and then later, Edward. They were carrying torches for each other long before they met and I liked that Quinn added that to their romance.

My only real gripe with this story was how long it took Cecelia to come clean with Edward. Everything else was more of the same that I’ve come to love about reading a Julia Quinn book. She has a talent for writing humorous love stories that hit me in the feels and this book was no different. It wasn’t my favorite book by hers but it was still a quality read that I’m sure fans of her books will enjoy.

Grade: 3.5 out of 5